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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Teenager killed in PoS

Family says his choices are to blame

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
206 days ago
20240720
17-year-old Jerome Joseph who was killed yesterday.

17-year-old Jerome Joseph who was killed yesterday.

COURTESY THE JOSEPH FAMILY

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The teenag­er who was killed in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day had re­cent­ly moved out of his child­hood home in Diego Mar­tin to avoid be­com­ing a sta­tis­tic. But de­spite re­set­tling in­to an apart­ment on Nel­son Street, Jerome “GI” Joseph was hunt­ed down by crim­i­nal el­e­ments de­ter­mined to kill him.

The 17-year-old was re­port­ed­ly shot in the head as he emerged from the apart­ment he was stay­ing in af­ter some­one called out to him around 6.45 am.

Joseph was found ly­ing face down at the bot­tom of the stair­well, clad in a pair of briefs. Po­lice la­belled the killing as gang-re­lat­ed. Rel­a­tives went to iden­ti­fy his body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day.

One woman said, “He was a good boy.” But “due to cer­tain cir­cum­stances in the area, that’s why he moved out.” She claimed Joseph end­ed up liv­ing on Nel­son Street af­ter cer­tain peo­ple in the Diego Mar­tin area chased a close rel­a­tive of his from the area. Joseph pre­vi­ous­ly lived at North Coast Road, Diego Mar­tin.

Re­veal­ing that she had spo­ken to the self-em­ployed me­chan­ic be­fore about his lifestyle choic­es, she still mourned the loss. “He chose that road,” she added.

Asked to de­scribe Joseph, she said he was “a lov­ing boy who loved his fam­i­ly.” She laughed, “When he get vex, phew, but he loved to help peo­ple and fix cars.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that Joseph’s fam­i­ly spared no ef­fort to en­sure he re­ceived an ed­u­ca­tion. One of the women said he at­tend­ed Ser­vol and sev­er­al oth­er in­sti­tu­tions to learn trade but had dropped out due to the lure of the gang lifestyle.

Joseph, they said, grew up with­out his fa­ther. They said if the el­der male had been around, Joseph’s life would have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly.

The woman said she last saw Joseph on Tues­day when she and an­oth­er rel­a­tive went to look for him at Nel­son Street, and he had giv­en her $25. But she ad­mit­ted “see­ing some­thing” she hadn’t want­ed to, which brought the vis­it to a pre­ma­ture end. 

Ze­ro­ing in on the crime sit­u­a­tion, one of the women de­clared, “It’s just hor­ri­ble, and these youths are just be­ing dunce as my­self.” She said there was so much de­spair and very lit­tle hope that it would change any­time soon. “It doh have no stop­ping; it doh have no end to this thing,” she cried.

An­oth­er fe­male ex­pressed anger as she called for the sit­u­a­tion to be tack­led from the top. “You have to get rid of the heads,” she said. “Then those lil youths and them might calm down be­cause it is the heads who are send­ing them and giv­ing them guns. They have the youths and them dy­ing young and them rock back en­joy­ing while them youths dy­ing out.”

She placed the blame square­ly on the shoul­ders of those head­ing crim­i­nal gangs in the coun­try.


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